Australia's minister for communications has called for a police investigation into Rupert Murdoch's News Corp after an Australian newspaper released 14,400 emails purportedly showing the company engaged a secret unit in the mid-1990s to sabotage its competitors.

Australia's minister for communications has called for a police investigation into Rupert Murdoch's News CorpPhoto: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Jonathan Pearlman in Sydney

1:19PM BST 28 Mar 2012

The emails, part of a four-year investigation by the Australian Financial Review newspaper, suggest News engaged in corporate hacking and high-tech piracy against its Australian pay television competitors. The practice reportedly cost the company's rivals $AUS50 million a year and helped to put at least one of them out of business.

The newspaper, owned by a rival media company, Fairfax Media, reported that News Corp had set up a covert unit known as Operational Security and employed former British and Israeli police and intelligence officers to use hackers to pirate the smart cards of rival pay TV operators. The allegations follow claims by BBC's Panorama that the company engaged in similar conduct to undermine BSkyB's competition.

The stash of emails came from the hard drive of a former Metropolitan police commander in London, Ray Adams, who was head of security in Europe at NDS, a former News Corp subsidiary. They show NDS operatives engaging in a range of illegal practices including sabotaging rivals, unlawfully obtaining telephone records and fabricating legal actions.

News Limited, the Australian arm of News Corp, today dismissed the allegations.

"The story is full of factual inaccuracies, flawed references, fanciful conclusions and baseless accusations which have been disproved in overseas courts," it said in a statement.

"News Limited and Foxtel [a pay-television company part-owned by News Corp] have spent considerable resources fighting piracy in Australia. It is ironic and deeply frustrating that we should be drawn into a story concerning the facilitation of piracy." But several ministers in the Gillard Government, which believes it has been unfairly targeted by the Murdoch stable in Australia, expressed concerns about the allegations.

"These are serious allegations, and any allegations of criminal activity should be referred to the Australian Federal Police for investigation," said a spokesperson for Stephen Conroy, the minister.

Wayne Swan, the treasurer, said: "I've seen the story, I'm not sure how accurate it is. Obviously it's concerning. we'll see how it plays out."

IThe report said Operational Security was headed by Reuven Hasak, a former deputy director of the Israeli domestic secret service, Shin Bet, and was closely supervised by Mr Murdoch.

Initially the unit aimed to hunt the pirates targeting News Corp's operations but it later began encouraging piracy and the publication of hacked software on the internet.

In one email exchange, Andy Coulthurst, a British hacker working for Operational Security, emailed an NDS official: "The hack on Irdeto is SO EASY! All you need is . . ." before rattling off the details.

"Andy this is great stuff," replied Avigail Gutman, who headed Operational Security for Asia Pacific from Taiwan, where her husband was the Israeli consul.